


a hundred places where i fear to go

by resident_longwinded_anon



Category: Supernatural
Genre: (in reference to 9.03), Episode: s15e18 Despair, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, POV Dean Winchester, POV Second Person, castiel in absentia, just because I didn't fix it in this fic doesn't mean it's not fixed in my heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-16 08:00:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29946891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/resident_longwinded_anon/pseuds/resident_longwinded_anon
Summary: "There are a hundred places where I fearTo go,—so with his memory they brim."-from "Time does not bring relief; you all have lied" by Edna St. Vincent MillayYou have never known grief like this.
Relationships: Castiel & Dean Winchester, Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 1
Kudos: 9





	a hundred places where i fear to go

**Author's Note:**

> After almost five years I return to this ship! With... a weird second-person introspective microfic that doesn't actually fix any of the problems in canon. The more things change, the more they stay the same, I guess?
> 
> Like I say in the summary, the title and and epigraph are from "Time does not bring relief; you all have lied", by Edna St. Vincent Millay ([x](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46464/time-does-not-bring-relief-you-all-have-lied)). Millay writes some of the best poems about grief I've read. I also highly recommend "[Spring](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44728/spring-56d223f01f86e)" and "[Dirge Without Music](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52773/dirge-without-music)"

You have never known grief like this.

You’ve been submerged in grief your whole life - you cannot remember a time its waves weren’t battering you - you have never known grief like this.

You’ve known grief for a parent four times now: first Mom, then Dad, then Bobby, and then Mom again. You’ve grieved Sam half a dozen times, and each time your heart’s been ripped out of your chest. You lost Jack twice: you’ve grieved a child. This isn’t even the first time you’ve had to mourn Cas.

Still. Still. You have never known grief like this. You’ve never lost - what was Cas to you, anyway? Not a lover: you were too much of a coward. Not a friend: he meant so much more.

Last time came closest. Last time - when it burnt his wings into the ground. When you wrapped him in those gauzy curtains and set his corpse ablaze. You think you had some idea, last time, of what it was you had lost.

This time makes last time feel like a victory.

God, he smiled at you as he died. Fourteen fucking years your life’s been dogged by demon deals - three times that, if you count Mom’s - and he used his to save your life, and then he smiled at you as he died. See, he said. I beat it. I beat them at their own game.

Fat lot of good that does him.

He loves you, he said. You want to drag him back hand-over-hand and smash his face into the wall. How could he? How _could_ he? How fucking dare he dump that on you and _leave_ , leave like every other _fucking_ person -

What fucking _good_ is his love if he was too much of a _coward_ to say it to your _goddamn face_? Would he ever have told you? Or would he have just stood at your shoulder for the next ten years, the next twenty, your silent ever-watching shadow, content to love and love and do nothing with it?

How long has he loved you?

The first time he died, you didn’t have time or inclination to grieve. There was an apocalypse to stop, and despite his last minute change of heart, he had been integral in causing it. By the time you considered honoring his sacrifice he was already back. (You still hear him in your dreams, sometimes: _I’ll hold them off! I’ll hold them all off!_ You wake with tears on your face, as though you’re making up now for the mourning you didn’t do then.) Did he love you then?

The second time he died, it was over so fast. He was there, then he was gone - Sam was there, then he was gone - and then Cas was back, but you didn’t care, since Sam was still gone. Did he love you then?

The third time he died he walked into the water and you thought you would never see him again, and you still carried around the only piece you had of him until he fell back into your lap like a star. Did he love you then? You loved him, you think - if what you feel can ever be called love, when it ruins everything you touch.

(He told you, years later, that he didn’t want to have sex, that night he died for the fourth time. That he thought he had to, or he’d be turned out in the rain to die. You kicked him out the next morning: did he love you, even then?)

God, _God_ , it hurts so much. He never ran his hands through your hair, but still your scalp aches for missing him. He never held your hands, but still your palms feel crucified.

Sam would call you melodramatic. You would point out he was just as bad when he lost Jess. He would go quiet. He’d ask, is that what he was to you?

You’d say, I don’t know.

You’ll never know.

That’s the ugliest most painful part of this whole ugly painful thing. Not the loss of a lover: he wasn’t one. Not the loss of your friend, your brother-in-arms, your co-parent, no, though he was all those things and more. The worst part - the _worst part_ \- is that all this horrific grief choking your throat isn’t even for _him_. You’re not grieving _him_. You’re grieving what he wasn’t. You’re grieving what he’ll never get to be.

You have never known grief like this.

**Author's Note:**

> Me? Disguise meta about a character's state of mind as fic? Never!


End file.
